He Use of Question Answer Relationship (Qar) Strategy To Improve the Eighth Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement at Junior High School

Abstract

This research was conducted by using classroom action research. This research focused on the use the QAR Strategy to improve the students’ reading comprehension achievement and students’ active participation of recount text at SMPN 7 Jember in the 2019/2020 academic year. Reading is one of the skills in learning English. Reading is a process of interaction between the readers and the text to translate and interpret to get the meaning and the information from the text that leads to comprehension. The reasons of conducting this research were to solve the students’ problems and to improve students’ achievement in reading comprehension of recount text. Based on the interview with one of the English teachers at SMPN 7 Jember, it was found that most of the students had problem with their reading comprehension. It was known from their scores that they were under the minimum score of that school, they were lack of vocabulary, and they had less motivation, less concentration, and less active participation. The researcher conducted this research to solve the students’ problems, improved their reading achievement, and to make the teaching reading of recount text more effective and efficient by using the QAR Strategy. In collecting the data, the researcher conducted a reading test and observation through virtual class by using Google Meet Application, it was due to the Covid-19 of pandemic that cannot be estimated when it will end. This research was conducted in 1 cycle. The implementation of the action in the first and the second meeting were used to teach reading comprehension by using the QAR Strategy based on the lesson plan constructed. The third meeting was used to conduct a reading test by using Google Form as the (media). This classroom research was conducted collaboratively with the English teacher in order to observe the students' activity while joining the teaching and learning process. The observation was used to know the best way of reading comprehension achievement by using the QAR Strategy. Based on the observation results, the percentage in meeting 1 showed that there were 67.64% or 23 of 34 students who were active. It means that the active participants were less than 70% of the total number of the students. In meeting 2 showed that there were 79.41% or 27 of 34 students who could be categorized as active participants. This result showed that the students’ active participation improved 11.77 %. So, the criteria of the research success dealing with the students’ active participation were at least 70 % of the students who were active in the teaching-learning process, it was already achieved in the second meeting. In addition, that there was improvement on the students’ reading comprehension achievement in recount text. It could be proved from the percentage of the students who got score ≥70 were 76.47%. While, before applying the QAR Strategy for teaching reading comprehension, the percentage of the students who got score ≥70 were 52.94%. Hence, it could be concluded that the use of the QAR Strategy was successful in improving the students’ active participation and the students’ reading achievement in recount text.